Posts Tagged ‘Unemployment’

That is the book “Rest” by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang that was reviewed in the immediately preceding post. Remember that the major points of this book were that there is a limit of about four hours for effective mental work, and that non work time needs to be spent in restorative activities. Previous healthy memory blog posts have mentioned that when I was I elementary school in the 1950s I was told that by now time at work would have been drastically reduced due to technology. Technology has advanced beyond our wildest dreams. And back in the 50s it was highly unusual for mothers to work. Yet today, everyone is working many more hours than in the 50s.

So what happened? Moreover, there is genuine concern about all the jobs that will be lost due to technology.

It seems that the solution to this problem is to recalibrate using guidance from Alex Soojung-Kim Pang. Cut the standard work week to 20 hours and use remaining time to recreate and engage in restorative activities.

This should not only solve a dangerous unemployment problem, but it should also result in an increase in the quality of work.

The title of this post is identical to the title of an article by Ana Swanson in the 24 September issue of the Washington Post. It begins with the story of a high school graduate who has dropped out of the workforce because he finds little satisfaction in the part-time, low wage jobs he’s had since graduating from high school. Instead he plays video games, including FIFA 16 and Rocket League on Xbox One and Pokemon Go on his smartphone.

The article notes that of last year 22% of the men between the ages of 21 and 30 with less than a bachelor’s degree reported not working at all in the previous year. This is up from 9.5% in 2000. These young men have replaced 75% of the time they used to spend working with time on the computer mostly playing video games.

From 2004 to 2007, before the recession, unemployed men averaged 5.7 hours on he computer, whereas employed men average 3.4 hours. This included video game time. After the recession, between 2011 to 2014 unemployed men average 12.2 hours per week, whereas employed men averaged 4.7 hours. With respect to video games from 2004-07 unemployed men averaged 3.4 hours per week versus 2.1 hours fro employed men. During the period from 2011-2014 unemployed men average 8.6 hours playing video games verses 3.2 hours for employed men.

Researchers are arguing that these increases in game playing are partially due to the games appeal having been increased. The estimate runs from one-fifth to one-third of the decreased work is attributable to the rising appeal of video games. HM believes that prior to these games most unemployed were confronted primarily to daytime television, which provided a strong inducement to seek work. Today video games provide an entertaining alternative to seeking work. As the games improve and become more sophisticated, the argument is that they have become even more appealing.

The article notes that the extremely low cost makes these games even more accessible. It states that recent research has found that households making $25K to $35K a year spent 92 more minutes a week online that households making $100K or more per year.

The article also notes that for the first time since the 1930s more U.S. men ages 18 to 34 are living with their parents than with romantic partners according to the Pew Research center.

The article argues that these men are happy. HM feels that this happiness is likely to be short-lived, and that there is a serious risk that these men will end up as adults who are stunted intellectually and emotionally.

It is a healthymemory tradition that on or about Labor Day, HM laments about the adulthood and retirement he was promised in elementary school in the 1950s. During this time it was highly unusual for mothers to work. One of the primary benefits from technology was to be a large amount of leisure. The economist John Maynard Keynes predicted in 1930 that the work week would shrink to 15 hours by 2030. Actually, technology advanced further and faster than was predicted. Wi fi and smart phones were never imagined, along with the internet. Now more people, including mothers, are working more hours. What happened?

Current economies are based on Gross Domestic Products (GDPs). Economic growth requires increasing GDPs. Eventually this model runs out of resources and steam. Yet we have to work more and consume more to foster this growth.

Not only has technology advanced, product quality has improved. An inexpensive watch has the same accuracy as a ROLEX. People pay for more expensive products for prestige. There is ample research showing that scotch drinkers pay substantially more for high quality scotch yet are unable to distinguish the difference when drinking blind. Scotch drinkers are just provided as an example. Premiums are paid for many products for prestige, not for the utility of the product.

Voters grovel at the feet of politicians for jobs. Jobs lost to trade are a primary focus in the current elections in the United States. However, the trade problem is minuscule compared to the lost of jobs that will be taken by technology.

The following data and projections have been taken from David Ignatius’s column in the 12 August 2016 Washington Post article titled “When robots take all the jobs.” McKinsey & Co. estimate that in manufacturing, 59% of activities could be automated, and that includes 90% of what welders, cutters, solderers and brazers do. In food service and accommodations, 73% of the work could be performed by machines. In retailing, 53% of the jobs could be lost. If computers can be programmed to understand speech as well as humans do, 66% of jobs in finance and insurance could be replaced. So, to use the vernacular, we ain’t seen nothing yet!

Economic security can be addressed by a greatly expanded earned-income tax credit, or by large public works programs. But the topic of the immediately preceding post, a Universal Basic Income, is inevitable or violence will break out and public disorder will become the order of the day.

Under a Universal Basic Income, everyone would have enough income to live comfortably. To increase one’s standard of living, or to purchase prestige, employment would be required. But people could drop out of the economy and pursue an education, training, artistic pursuits,, travel, whatever would increase the quality of life.

The reader should be aware that this view of automation creating enormous job losses is not shared by all. So some regard this as a pseudo problem. But HM would still argue for changes that would provide the freedom and leisure activities that would result from technology that were promised him back in the nineteen fifties. HM has retired, so he finally has leisure time. His wish applies to all that there be vastly increased amount of leisure time.

The October 2, 2015 edition of the New Scientist had two interesting articles in the Comments section. The first by Federico Pistero is titled “As tech threatens jobs, we must test a universal basic income.” An earlier healthy memory blog post, “The Second Machine Age,” reviewed a book by Erik Brunjolfsson & Andrew McAfee titled, “The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies”l predicted that many jobs, jobs that would be regarded as advanced, will disappear during this second machine age. Other healthy memory blog posts reviewed books whose authors argued that humanity’s “unique” capacity for empathy would still keep people employed. I wrote that there would not be enough jobs requiring this “unique” capacity to keep everyone employed, even if these skills could not be implemented with technology.

The comment piece by Pistero stated that it is possible that within 20 years almost half of all jobs will be lost to machines, and nobody really knows how we are going to cope with that. Pistero writes “One of the most interesting proposals, that doesn’t rely on the fanciful idea that the market will figure it out, is an unconditional basic income (UBI).

A UBI would provide a monthly stipend to every citizen, regardless of income or employment status. A key criticism of the UBI is that it would kill the incentive to work. However, research cited by Pistero involving a whole town in Canada and 20 villages in India found that not only did people continue working, but they were more likely to start businesses or perform socially beneficial activities compared with controls. Moreover, thee was an increase in general well-being , and no increase in alcohol, drug use, or gambling.

Of course, this research needs to be replicated, but it is good to know that this problem is being researched. The poverty resulting from large scale unemployment would be devastating.

A second article in the same Comment section by Laura Smith is titled “Pay people a living wage and watch them get healthier.” Paying the lowest earners less than a living wage, which occurs in both the US and the UK, leaves full-time workers unable to lift their families our of poverty. The problem goes far beyond unpaid bills.

Poverty keeps people from resources such as healthcare and safe housing. People in poverty experience more wear and tear from stress than the rest of us, they are sicker, and they die earlier. Children living in poverty are more likely to be depressed and to have trouble in school. Newborns are more likely to die in infancy. Poor people are marginalized. They often live outside the scope of therapeutic, vocational, social, civic, and cultural resources. This experience of “outsiderness” reduces cognitive and emotional function. Brain activity associated with social exclusion has been shown to parallel that of bodily pain.

Research addressing the question of whether raising people’s incomes would improve their health looked at the impact of a community-wide income rise when a casino was built on a Cherokee reservation in North Carolina. The research compared psychiatric assessments of children before and after this even. Children’s symptom rates began to decline. By the fourth year out of poverty, the symptom rates could not be distinguished from children who had never been poor.

For Labor Day I think it is appropriate to repost “Why, With All This Technology Are We Working So Hard?”

When I was in elementary school the predictions were that due to technology we would have much more leisure time in the future. I’ll remind you that at this time it was highly unusual for married mothers to be working. In my view some of the technological achievements, particularly in computing and in broadband, have vastly exceeded these predictions. So I ask you, why are we working so hard? We’re working much harder than when I was in elementary school.

I would ask further what, exactly, are we producing? Suppose only those who provided the essentials for living and for safety went to work? What percentage of the working population would that be? Make your own guess, but mine would be less than 10%. So what is going on here?

Currently we are working hard to achieve an unemployment rate at or below 5%. We are finding that exceedingly hard to achieve. But should we be? Remember that the previous two occasions when the employment rate was at or below 5%, the economic prosperity was bogus. There was the dot com bogus, when people expected to become rich via the internet, only the path to these riches remained unspecified. Then there was the bogus finance/real estate boom where riches were created via bogus and unsubstantiated financial instruments. So why, absent some other fictitious basis for a boom, do we expect to get back to 5% unemployment?

To examine the question of why we are working so hard, I present the results of the following study.1 It found that being poor, is bad. Of course, this finding is not surprising. The surprising finding is that a household income of $75,000.00 represented a satiation level beyond which experienced well being no longer increased. And this was in high cost living areas. In other areas the number would be lower. And this was for experienced well being. Emotional well being might have carried additional therapeutic costs. So it is clear that we are working more for no real benefit. Why?

One reason might be the that the economic theorists who currently formulate policy are classical economists using the rational theory of man. Behavioral economists have debunked this theory. Moreover, computing GNP in terms of hard dollars might smack of objectivity, but reminds one of the drunk who is looking for his car keys under the streetlamp rather than in the dimly illuminated part of the parking lot where he dropped his keys. Economic measures should include such subjective, but relevant, measures as happiness and life satisfaction.

Perhaps with the appropriate measures and appropriate philosophies regarding self fulfillment and self actualization we can get off the treadmill and enjoy the fruits of technology and our lives.

When I was in elementary school the predictions were that due to technology we would have much more leisure time in the future. I’ll remind you that at this time it was highly unusual for married mothers to be working. In my view some of the technological achievements, particularly in computing and in broadband, have vastly exceeded these predictions. So I ask you, why are we working so hard? We’re working much harder than when I was in elementary school.

I would ask further what, exactly, are we producing? Suppose only those who provided the essentials for living and for safety went to work? What percentage of the working population would that be? Make your own guess, but mine would be less than 10%. So what is going on here?

Currently we are working hard to achieve an unemployment rate at or below 5%. We are finding that exceedingly hard to achieve. But should we be? Remember that the previous two occasions when the employment rate was at or below 5%, the economic prosperity was bogus. There was the dot com bogus, when people expected to become rich via the internet, only the path to these riches remained unspecified. Then there was the bogus finance/real estate boom where riches were created via bogus and unsubstantiated financial instruments. So why, absent some other fictitious basis for a boom, do we expect to get back to 5% unemployment/

To examine the question of why we are working so hard, I present the results of the following study.1 It found that being poor, is bad. Of course, this finding is not surprising. The surprising finding is that a household income of $75,000.00 represented a satiation level beyond which experienced well being no longer increased. And this was in high cost living areas. In other areas the number would be lower. And this was for experienced well being. Emotional well being might have carried additional therapeutic costs. So it is clear that we are working more for no real benefit. Why?

One reason might be the that the economic theorists who currently formulate policy are classical economists using the rational theory of man. Behavioral economists have debunked this theory. Moreover, computing GNP in terms of hard dollars might smack of objectivity, but reminds one of the drunk who is looking for his car keys under the streetlamp rather than in the dimly illuminated part of the parking lot where he dropped his keys. Economic measures should include such subjective, but relevant, measures as happiness and life satisfaction.

Perhaps with the appropriate measures and appropriate philosophies regarding self fulfillment and self actualization we can get off the treadmill and enjoy the fruits of technology and our lives.